House of Commons: Scars of Mirrodin Edition!

Noel deCordovaThursday, September 30, 2010

i all, and welcome back to the first post-Scars of Mirrodin Prerelease edition of From the Lab. Every time a new large set is released, I like to complete a traditional puzzle called House of Commons. Created by Chris Millar, House of Commons is essentially a deck-building exercise that uses every common from the latest large set (in this case, Scars of Mirrodin.)

Here's a quick rundown of the guidelines. I had to use four copies of every common to build a lot of decks. So, for example, I couldn't put four copies of Galvanic Blast in all my red decks, and I'd have to use four copies of Whitesun's Passage at some point. The resulting array of decks (eleven, in this case) is spread out across all five colors in a (hopefully) balanced fashion.

Whenever I attempt this puzzle, I always accidentally save some of the best commons for last, making that deck pretty unfair. So I split them up again, leading to some strange results. The four copies of Instill Infection (which, by the way, I witnessed being cast on a Precursor Golem at the Prerelease) became four singletons in four different black decks, which I thought was weird. Melt Terrain and Blunt the Assault were other odd placements.

I also am interested in what color combinations I end up with. Green white, black green, and black blue led the pack with two decks each. Most of the rest contained red, which was strangely difficult to split up. Oh well. Let's see what I came up with!

Next, we have the most infect-oriented deck of the day, containing most of the beatdown poison creatures. Corpse Cur is key as an infected Gravedigger, and Withstand Death serves as excellent creature defense.

Okay, no more infect after this deck, I promise! I had two leftover Tainted Strikes, and I naturally decided to cast them on the fattest commons available to win in one shot. A combination of a Tainted Strike and an Untamed Might on, say, an Alpha Tyrannax would do it. Of course, your fatties can win the game without infect as well. Some cheap black creatures and one of the better removal spells in this format (Grasp of Darkness) rounds this deck out.

This deck is probably the strangest of them all. It was cobbled together late in the process and features random green creatures and random white combat tricks. I guess you try to find Razorfield Thresher or beat down with your makeshift team. To balance a strange creature force, I turned to some powerful removal in Revoke Existence.

Hope you enjoyed this traditional look at the commons of Scars of Mirrodin!

Here is a quick reminder that today is the last day to submit decks for the Build Around Contest, so make sure to get them in if you want me to see your deck. Click the link to the rules of the contest if you're confused on how to begin.

See you next week as we dive full throttle into the exciting new world of Mirrodin.